Poker Night at Otacon's
by Sephulbadis
Summary: Starts at Chez Hal, but doesn't stay long. Meet the Snakemobile! See Raiden bowl! Endure Otacon's elephant jokes!
1. Poker

1 DISCLAIMER: I don't own Snake, Otacon, Raiden, Rose, or my own car. Konami owns them, the bank owns the car. On with the show!  
  
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"Why can't we ever have the game at my place?" Snake, already embedded in the armchair Otacon generally reserved for communing with his game console, was feeling out-of-place. For one, Otacon had vacuumed.  
  
"Because I'm allergic to smoke. You know that." Otacon emerged from the apartment's dainty kitchenette, bowl of his famous spinach dip in hand. "And that's entirely apart from the fact that you live in a cardboard box."  
  
Snake glared straight ahead. He did not live in a cardboard box. He didn't. Sure, there were a few lying around his place, but it wasn't like they got underfoot or anything. They just made him feel…safe. Stewing, he leaned forward to poach some dip—but paused. There were no chips. No chips at all.  
  
"Raiden's on chip detail this week," Otacon supplied helpfully. "Rose is bringing one of those seven-layer things."  
  
Snake spat, heartily irritated. Otacon gave him a black look. "See what happens when you start letting women show up? First you have to start cleaning, for chrissake," Snake said, waving a callussed hand to indicate the ambient tidiness, "and then they start expecting you to eat vegetables. Before you know it you've got a can of Autumn Spice aerosol in the bathroom and Anne Geddes magnets on the fridge."  
  
"Anne Geddes?" asked Otacon, ducking back into said fridge. There was a magnetic poetry set on it, and a recipe for pad thai. He emerged with a Corona.  
  
"You know, babies dressed up like cabbages and ladybugs. She did this calendar called Down In The Garden, you ought—"  
  
There was a knock on the door. Otacon waited patiently. He was used to this. If he didn't give the kid a chance to show off occasionally, he was impossible to deal with. The door, and its double bolts and chain lock, rattled gently. There was a brief, muffled conversation.  
  
Another minute and a half passed in silence—mostly silence, anyway, apart from the grisly sound of Snake chewing his nails and a female voice humming on the other side of the door. In due course, Otacon spotted the tell-tale set of hands working their way the bottom edge of his balcony. He opened the sliding glass door. Wouldn't do to have the kid trip and impale himself.  
  
"Chips?" asked Snake, testily.  
  
"Wait a second," replied the balcony.  
  
In a flash of blue, black, and white, a truly improbable back-handspring of sorts launched Raiden up and over the railing of the balcony into a stable crouch. The whole procedure was a vision of grace and lithe muscle, much unlike the first time he'd tried to pull the same stunt and ended up with a foot in Otacon's jade plant.  
  
"Chips?" repeated Snake, unimpressed. He'd seen it before.  
  
"Keep your pants on," snapped Raiden, smoothing his shirt down. "C'mon in, Rose." He slid the last bolt and opened the door. Rose ducked in, her pale cheeks flushed pink with pride. Snake stifled a groan. She had a bag of chips, yes—and a ranchero dip. He hated ranchero dip.  
  
  
  
  
  
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Thanks for reading my first fanfic, and stay posted for further chapters when the boys (and girl) actually get around to playing poker! See if Snake can suggest a game of strip blackjack without getting M9-ed! 


	2. Bowling?

"Deal!" said Rose brightly. She handed the freshly shuffled deck to Snake, who eyed it like a tainted cheese. Rose could do the 'bridge' shuffle thing, like a Vegas dealer. Snake usually dropped most of the deck. It was embarassing.  
  
He dealt. They played. Rose won.  
  
"She's stacking the damn deck," Snake complained bitterly.  
  
"You can shuffle next time, then. I have to use the bathroom." Rose stood up and disappeared down the hall.  
  
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Otacon leaned back in his chair to check that the bathroom door was well and truly shut. "Not showing yet? Almost, what, seven months now?" He swigged at his beer.  
  
"Ixnay on the avidgray," hissed Raiden. His palm crept nervously up to the patch of skin below his ear. "She won't admit it was a computer glitch. She's got names picked out and everything."  
  
"That's rough. Like what?"  
  
"Daphne. Daphne for a girl, Dave for a boy."  
  
Snake very nearly spit out his mouthful of spinach dip. Hastily, he stole Otacon's beer to wash it down.  
  
"She won't listen to me," Raiden complained. "You know how expensive it is with her going through ice cream, pickles, and feminine hygeine products?"  
  
That did it. A pressurized mouthful of Mexican beer soaked the card table, the cards, and the front of Snake's uncharacteristically clean turtleneck. Otacon spared him another look that would cut tin cans in half.  
  
"Jesus, kid," Snake snorted. "Not too bright, is she?"  
  
"No," said Raiden, his eyes dreamy. "But that hair…those eyes…the way she moves…the things she talks about…"  
  
"I…need a new beer." Otacon retreated back into the fridge.  
  
"Get some paper towels," Snake called. "Dammit, the deck's ruined. What the hell are we going to do now, go bowling?"  
  
"Yeah," said Raiden, his pale eyes alight. "God, I love bowling. I'm great at bowling."  
  
Snake paused. It was too easy. It was below him. It was a cheap shot, and one that he'd made a number of times before. Still, the kid never seemed to catch on—a perfect example of what happens when a perfectly normal boy grows up on a diet of antidepressants and the blood of the unbeliever.  
  
"It's all in the wrist," Snake said, finally, but his heart wasn't in it.  
  
"I haven't been in years," mused Otacon.  
  
"Been what?" asked Raiden, his face all innocence. Snake almost lost another mouthful of beer. Otacon reddened peevishly.  
  
"Bowling. There was an all-night bowling alley and mini-golf course by the house where I grew up." His eyes misted. "There was a waterfall with colored lights under it on the seventh hole…"  
  
"We'd better get going," said Snake, as the whoosh of flushing plumbing announced Rose's imminent return. "Like right now. She wouldn't like it. Tendonitis. She told me. Very painful."  
  
Otacon shrugged. Raiden blinked. The heady smell of nostalgia filled the room, and no-one blamed it on the dog, because there wan't one. The moment was right. Without a sound—all right, with the sound of Otacon nearly tripping over the doorstop—the three made their way through the front door. There was a bowling alley on Third and Main, and it needed infiltrating.  
  
  
  
  
  
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Next chapter: everybody goes bowling! Or something. Hope you enjoyed this one, more to come whether you like it or not! 


	3. On the Road

The Snakemobile was a majestic beast—in this one respect, heavy-duty machinery had been good to Snake. A sky-blue Buick hardtop, dating from the days when they'd made 'em to really LAST: specifically, when they'd made 'em like military troop transports with AM stereos. It ran like a garbage truck and swayed unnervingly in high wind, but once it got up to speed it could churn through three late-model cars and a dairy cow without an appreciable loss in momentum. Snake had parked it as far as possible from the main press of parking spaces surrounding Otacon's apartment building. He didn't want door dings.  
  
They didn't get far. Down the stairs, across the first lot, halfway to the car—already Raiden was looking perkier—there was a BREEP BREEP that echoed from nearby walls. A few crows worrying at a hamburger wrapper under a sodium-vapor lamp several yards away startled and flapped off.  
  
"That you, Snake?" asked Otacon, tapping at his neck.  
  
"Not me."  
  
Raiden winced. Somehow, Rose had figured out how to turn up the volume on his ringer. He swatted his nanos to life. "Rose?"  
  
"That's right, Jack," said the familiar voice. Rose's CODEC daemon, even if it was a monotonal green, looked to be developing a dangerously purple cast to the cheeks. "I assume you've all been kidnapped, or called away on some other impossibly urgent mission? Something that absolutely requires you LEAVE YOUR GIRLFRIEND IN A STRANGE MAN'S BATHROOM?"  
  
Otacon waved a hand urgently. "Liquid," he mouthed soundlessly. Snake provided a thumbs-up. Raiden stared. "What the hell?" he mouthed in return.  
  
"Liquid. Bowling alley."  
  
Raiden rolled his eyes, and made a complicated gesture that suggested, in quick succession, that Otacon could cram an unspecified object through a narrow, unyielding pore, and that he, Raiden, would in short order turn from a living breathing menace to repressive governmental regimes and idly meandering grunts into a steaming pile of organ tissue minced fine enough to pass through open-weave cheesecloth, and further that Snake, as indicated by a double-jointed wriggle of thumb and index finger, would in all likelihood end up at a potluck in a decorative aspic mold with parsley garnish.  
  
"I've got to remember that one," murmured Snake appreciatively.  
  
"JACK?" demanded the inorexable voice from Raiden's treacherous nanomachines. "I'm waiting, Jack."  
  
"Ah, right. Snake got a call." With a sigh, Raiden shrugged. What the hell? He wasn't good at winging it. "Apparently there's some intelligence that Liquid, or a part of him-" an encouraging nod from Otacon—"has been traced to a location downtown near a bowling alley. There's, ah…also a possibility…"  
  
"A possibility of what? Are you all right?" Rose's daemon no longer looked at risk for burst capillaries. Could she actually be buying it?  
  
"Possibility that he may also have somehow compromised a Denny's in the same area," Raiden finished. His daemon managed to keep a straight face—but every finger on both hands was crossed. He was actually rather proud of himself for that one.  
  
A pause. Snake's eyebrows raised in question, and dropped back into his habitual scowl as Raiden swatted a preoccupied hand at him.  
  
"Well, be careful."  
  
"I will. I'll see you at home."  
  
Raiden waited a few seconds. Then a few more, for good measure. And then, finally, he smacked underneath the other ear, the spot that turned the damned things OFF. And he grinned.  
  
"We okay?" ventured Otacon.  
  
"We are cleared for bowling and post-bowling replenishment of rations," Raiden announced smugly. The last time he'd tried to pull one that fast, he'd needed diazepam.  
  
Snake grinned. "Not bad, kid," he allowed. Otacon made an exultant noise best characterized as hoot-like and ventured a couple of chicken-hops. "Let's go."  
  
The inside of the Snakemobile smelled like smoke, and crusty old badass, but to Raiden it was the sweet smell of liberty, transgression, and being out past 10 pm on a weeknight.  
  
"Next stop," growled Snake, "Century Bowl and Late-Nite Lounge. Buckle your damn seatbelt, Otacon."  
  
  
  
  
  
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Okay, so they didn't quite get to the alley this chapter. Soon, I promise. Thanks for staying with me! 


	4. Shoes

"NPR?" Otacon fiddled with the radio's analog tuning knobs. It replied with alternate squawks of too-loud financial news and wet-sounding static. He suspected the radio was allergic to him. It only qualified as electronic equipment by dint of the fact that there was, intermittently, some form of current running through it. "Doesn't this thing get music stations anymore?"  
  
"Lost the aerial," said Snake. "Deer."  
  
"-Deer-?" asked Raiden from the back seat.  
  
"Look, kid. When you repeat what I just said over the CODEC, it's cute. When you're within conversational distance in an enclosed space—a car, for example—it gets old."  
  
"Sorry," came the petulant response. Otacon checked the rear-view mirror. It was as much a mystery to him as to anyone else what Raiden's actual age was, but there was no denying the fact that he was making nose-prints on the inside of the window. Ah, well. Highly trained black-ops professionals had to get their juvenile kicks somewhere.  
  
"You were making that up about Liquid, right? I'm just –checking-, you know." Snake flipped the wipers on as a gritty drizzle speckled the windshield.  
  
"Well, yes." The long-habitual straightening of glasses. "As near as I've been able to tell, Liquid was pretty much reduced to his component amino acids."  
  
"I'll make you a bet, then," offered Snake, tugging the beast around a tight right turn. "Five bucks says he's there, waiting. A scrap of cuticle managed to survive and attached itself to some poor bastard, and he's made his way here for the sole purpose of interfering with our plans to bowl."  
  
"You're on. You're also nuts."  
  
Snake grinned.  
  
"You don't even have five dollars on you, do you?"  
  
"No. But he does." Snake jabbed a thumb at the backseat.  
  
"I'm –not- giving you five bucks, Snake," Raiden insisted, crossing his arms.  
  
"Giving? Pfeh." Snake turned his head to spit by way of emphasis, but realized, alas, that the window was still rolled up. So much for exposition. "It wouldn't be the first time you didn't like me getting something out of your pants."  
  
Otacon blinked. This was news.  
  
"Huh?" Raiden made a quick inventory. Wallet, check. Keys, check. Eight dollars and sixty-three cents, check. Lime-flavored lip balm, check. "What the hell did you ever get out of my pants, you old bastard?"  
  
"You," Snake chuckled. God, but he'd set that one up –smooth-. He was still grinning when they pulled into the cracked parking lot of the bowling alley.  
  
It wasn't much. The sign was almost as big as the front of the building, and in the dark its racing lights sent epileptically strobing shadows over the parking lot. CENTURY BOWL, it proclaimed yellowly as a blue bowling ball rolled perpetually toward three pins it would never reach, AND LOUNGE. 'Lounge' was picked out in cursive letters with lurid red bulbs, as though to suggest it was a cosmopolitan haven of sex and dissipation. It had decent cheese-fries.  
  
"See? No Liquid." Levering himself out of the Snakemobile, Otacon swung a long arm around expansively. "No Ocelot. No eight-story automated killing machines. –Somebody- owes me five dollars."  
  
Raiden shut his door harder than was strictly necessary.  
  
"Give it to him later," said Snake, heading for the front door. "I'm going to get some shoes."  
  
Raiden jogged after him, but stopped in his tracks after clearing the car's tail end. He caught Otacon's elbow. "Hang on a second," he hissed. "If he doesn't have five bucks on him, how the hell is he going to rent shoes?"  
  
"Wait for it," Otacon advised sagely, pointing. "You'll notice he's not going in the front door."  
  
"He's not going in the door at all. Around the side, into the alley with all the Dumpsters…" Raiden craned his neck for a better angle. "Oh -God-, he's not…is he?"  
  
"Actually, he is. It's going to get better. Keep watching."  
  
Raiden did. He wouldn't have been able to tear his eyes off the proceedings if he'd wanted to, not even with barbecue tongs. There was no way Snake was stripping off his clothes—revealing his off-green stealth suit—and making a start on the ascent up the whitewashed brick wall toward a wheezing kitchen- exhaust vent. He shook his head. This was obviously another elaborately contructed VR sim. Had to be. But why would they have bothered to put dried mustard down the front of Snake's suit?  
  
"There he goes," murmured Otacon, with a hint of pride in his voice. Snake had pried up one corner of the grating over the vent and slipped inside. Raiden pinched himself—hard.  
  
"I have to grab his clothes," said Otacon apologetically. "I'll meet you inside. Don't worry—if he doesn't get the chance to infiltrate –something- at least twice a month, he gets a rash."  
  
  
  
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Next chapter: the wait is over! Actual BOWLING! Rejoice! 


	5. Coffee. Coffee good.

Apparently it –was- all in the wrist. Raiden was winning.  
  
"Steee-rike," he exulted, waggling a fist in the air. Technically it was a spare, since Snake had surreptitiously pressed the re-rack button on the ball return, but after five frames he was still forty points ahead. Life was good.  
  
The highlighted bar on the scoring screen overhead slipped down from "BOWLGOD" to "HLOKITY". Snake was up. He'd been in the men's room putting his clothes back on while Raiden entered the names. Otacon got to be "CHESFRY".  
  
Snake sighted down the lane. The tiny guidance arrows under the thick varnish winked cheekily at him. Little bastards, he thought. He'd get them this time.  
  
He shuffled forward, got a good back swing on the ball, and released. The ball slid spinlessly across the varnish for the first few initial yards, then began to rotate like mad as it homed in on the pins. A little to the left…to the LEFT, damn it…not that far goddammit get back over to the right you dirty son of a bitch ball you bastard goddamn ball OVER TO THE RIGHT GODDAMMIT…Christ. It was so unfair.  
  
"Gutterball again, Snake?" Otacon already had his weapon of choice out of the ball-return.  
  
The injustice of it was palpable. It quivered in the air like a translucent jelly. It hung like a noxious odor. There was only one thing to do, and by God Snake was going to do it. His ball came back. He hefted it grimly, and turned again to face the sneering mouth of Lane 8.  
  
He walked forward, stepping neatly over the red foul line, past the first row of guidance arrows, past the veering streaks where cheaply-polished balls had left multicolored tracks on the lane's glossy laminate, past the second grouping of arrows put there by the sadistic arbiters of bowling alleys to point up the fact that a given roll was, by that point, irrevocably screwed. With one red-and-blue oxford-style shoe, he swept the lane clear of standing pins. And then, to make it official, he bent to give his ball a good shove through the middle of the gap. He walked back.  
  
"Steee-rike," he stated flatly. "You're up, cheese-fry."  
  
Otacon stared, briefly dumbstruck. Hacker or not, he was used to thinking in terms of orderly patterns, of defined constants and variables. Snake had just violated one of the most basic, primal laws of bowling. He had done what every bowler in his heart of hearts longed with a seething frustrated passion to do, but was restrained from by the inflexible interface of the sport. Or the management.  
  
"Ah, Snake," he managed finally, "maybe we should call it here. There's a couple of guys coming over."  
  
Indeed there were. A middle-aged potbellied man and a younger earnest- looking sort in a polo shirt with the Century Bowl logo over the breast pocket were grimly making their way through the loose crowd of bowlers toward Lane 8.  
  
"Guys…" ventured Raiden, tugging at the finger-holes in his ball.  
  
Snake swore under his breath. "Don't have enough to trank them all. Dammit."  
  
"I don't –really- think that's necessary, Snake."  
  
"-Guys-," repeated Raiden, rather louder.  
  
"This is what engineers like to call 'bad systems management'."  
  
"Bite me."  
  
"Got a little problem here," Raiden insisted. The ball's thumb-hole had latched onto his relevant digit with remarkable tenacity, and would not be dislodged. Meanwhile, the management had closed ranks.  
  
"Can I help you, gentlemen?" asked the older one. The higher-ranking, obviously. Snake catalogued eight different ways to incapacitate him before he could get out the fatal phrase.  
  
"Just, ah, just bowling. You know." Otacon attempted a disarming grin. It worked on grocery checkout girls.  
  
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave," said the Upper Management. Snake cursed the lost opportunity.  
  
"Look, I'm –sorry- to interrupt here," noted Raiden with a growing impatience, "but I've –really- got a PATHETIC FOOLS! DID YOU THINK I COULD BE DEFEATED SO EASILY?"  
  
The British-accented voice boomed at preternatural volume through the cavernous open space of the alley.  
  
Snake took cover behind the ball-return. "What the –hell-?" He fumbled at his hip—damn it all, his weapons were at home…  
  
"I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU, SNAKE," the voice boomed. Raiden stood like a stick of wood, ball dangling heavily from a nerveless hand. "IT'S TAKEN ME MONTHS TO MAKE MY WAY HERE, BUT I KNEW YOU'D COME."  
  
"Jesus Christ!" The Upper Management scrambled up the two steps into the seating area, and nearly went sprawling as he dodged into the cocktail lounge. The Middle Management, not far behind, took refuge behind a pool table.  
  
"ALL IT TAKES IS A CUTICLE, SNAKE," the voice teased. "A TINY SCRAP OF FLESH, FERRIED FROM THUMB TO THUMB, FINALLY COME TO REST IN EXACTLY THE RIGHT PLACE TO SEAL YOUR LONG-AWAITED DOOM!"  
  
"Outside!" barked Snake, breaking for the front door. Most of the other bowlers had already panicked their way out. The din of car engines starting and hasty acceleration promised a clear open space by the time he got there.  
  
"GET OUT THERE, OTACON," prodded Liquid's voice smugly. Still standing underneath the scoring screen, Raiden's foot nudged at the stunned engineer. He'd 'hidden' under one of the chairs. One pale arm attempted to fold into the other, hampered to a considerable degree by the bowling ball still attached to its right thumb. "I CAN WAIT."  
  
Otacon made a mad dash for the door. His top speed was a pretty good one, especially if one made allowances for windmilling like a demented stork. To his distinct surprise, a spray of blood and lung tissue completely failed to erupt from his chest at any point. Out in the lot, Snake had already taken up position behind the Buick, gun or no gun. Otacon made a dive for a low bank of ornamental shrubbery bordering the opposite side of the parking lot. There was no way he was going to be much use during –this- showdown—he didn't even have his laptop! How could he have been so careless?  
  
"READY YET, SNAKE?" The insouciant swagger was marred by the counterbalance of a ten-pound ball, but the booming voice paid no heed. Lights flashed and danced behind Raiden's head, making a multihued corona in his light hair.  
  
"Come and get me, you monocellular asshole," growled Snake. This was going to be a rough one.  
  
Raiden advanced. And stopped.  
  
He snickered. With a brief grimace and a faintly audible crack of the joint, he pulled his thumb out of the ball. And he snickered again.  
  
"You can come out of the hedge, Otacon. Suckers."  
  
"Jesus –Christ-, Raiden." Snake rose up from behind the car like a wrathful force of nature, brows drawn so far together as to nearly occlude his eyes. "You try a stunt like that again, and I swear to God I'll kill you in your sleep just to make sure."  
  
"Oh, come on." Raiden tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels, which still sported the alley's rental shoes. "You were losing anyway. Let's go get coffee."  
  
"How'd you do the voice like that, dammit? Were you using the PA?"  
  
"Nanos," Raiden admitted.  
  
Otacon stalked shakily across the lot. His nerves were fizzing, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to throttle Raiden with his bare hands or just start gibbering now. "Coffee," he muttered dazedly. "Coffee good."  
  
"Get in, then." Snake unlocked the car. "Get in, before I decide to put the kid in the trunk."  
  
Silence reigned as Snake pulled out into traffic. It remained as he took a freeway on-ramp and nearly collided with a Volkswagen. It remained as he pulled off again, and into the brightly-lit lot of the all-night restaurant.  
  
Finally: "Otacon?"  
  
"Yeah, Snake?"  
  
"You owe me five bucks."  
  
"Bite me, Snake."  
  
  
  
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Next chapter: Who gets the pie? Who gets the Denver omelette? Stay tuned! 


	6. EVERYBODY got jokes!

EXTRA SPECIAL DISCLAIMER: In addition to not owning Snake, Otacon, or Raiden, who are owned by Konami, I do not own Volkswagen, which is owned by Volkswagen. I do not own -a- Volkswagen, either. They are owned by other people.  
  
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"Okay, okay. How about this: how do you get an elephant into a Volkswagen?"  
  
"Open the door."  
  
"Don't ruin the suspense, Snake. Okay, yes, you open the door. But how do you get –two- elephants into a Volkswagen?"  
  
"Open the back door."  
  
"Snake."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"If you don't let me tell my jokes in peace and quiet, I will see to it personally that your private phone number is distributed to telemarketers, fund-raisers, and poll-takers nationwide."  
  
"Suit yourself." Snake had a slice of pie. Blueberry. He'd had a cup of coffee too, but now Otacon had it in addition to his own and, for that matter, Raiden's. All three were empty, and it wasn't for the first time.  
  
"All right. Now. How do you get –three- elephants into a Volkswagen?"  
  
Several seconds of eerie quiet passed before Raiden finished chewing a mouthful of hashbrowns. "Trunk?" he suggested thickly.  
  
"Very good, very good. Excellent. Yes. How do you get four elephants into a Volkswagen?"  
  
More silence. Snake chased a berry around on his plate.  
  
"Ha!" Otacon crowed. "You put one in the –glove box-."  
  
"Glove box," Raiden repeated, more out of habit than anything. He poked another forkful of hashbrowns into his mouth. "Are there any more elephants?"  
  
"No, but get this…"  
  
Snake groaned. Otacon had funny like pigs had income tax forms. It never slowed him down, though.  
  
"Quiet, Snake. Raiden, what did Tarzan say when he saw two elephants coming over the hill?"  
  
"You said there were no more elephants."  
  
"All right, there are just these two more elephants. Thanks." A waitress leaned over the table to refill the coffee cups. All three of them. Raiden gazed longingly across the tabletop at his. It steamed as Otacon raised it. It stopped steaming when he drank most of it in one go.  
  
"What did Tarzan say, Otacon?"  
  
Otacon mimed shading his eyes. "'Look,'" he said, "'There are two elephants coming over the hill!'"  
  
"Oh, God." Snake buried his face in his hands.  
  
"That's all of them. I promise." Grinning, Otacon leaned back in the booth with another cup.  
  
"I've got one," Raiden mumbled hopefully around a mouthful of egg.  
  
"You already –had- your joke tonight," scowled Snake, smearing out on his plate the first lines of a tree. A blueberry tree. With blueberry-shaped birds sitting in it. "One more, and you're walking home. Bitch about it, and you're brachiating."  
  
"It's funny."  
  
Snake sighed. "Make it short."  
  
"Right." Raiden swallowed hastily, and pointed the business end of his fork at Snake in an interview-like attitude. "Snake."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Ask me if I'm a potato."  
  
"You're kidding." It was a flat statement.  
  
"No, no, you have to ask me if I'm a potato."  
  
"You're –not- a goddamned potato. I've seen potatoes."  
  
Otacon blinked through steam-fogged lenses. "Actually, if you peeled one, there –is- a certain res—"  
  
"Fine, Otacon, -you- ask me if I'm a potato."  
  
Otacon shrugged. Hey, it was only fair. "Are you a potato?"  
  
"No," said Raiden, barely suppressing a fit of giggles. "I am not a potato."  
  
The other two stared.  
  
"That's enough," said Snake, sliding out of the booth. "Otacon? I'm going to go pay. If he tries to tell any more, kill him."  
  
  
  
  
  
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Rather less action-packed, I know, but sometimes you just feel like writing dialogue. : ) At least one more chapter to come, as soon as I figure out what about. Feel free to offer suggestions. Thanks as always for reading! 


	7. It's getting early

"I want to go see a movie," declared Otacon. The Snakemobile was on the road again. He was full—full, by God!—of energy. The idea of going home to a beer-soaked card table and spending the rest of the night on Usenet didn't appeal.  
  
"No, you don't. You'll get through half of it, the coffee will wear off, and you'll drool on my shoulder again."  
  
"I want to see Queen of the Damned, Snake. Come on."  
  
Snake blanched, and very nearly ran a red light into the broad side of a minivan. Queen of the Damned? What was next, decaf? Colored briefs? "Raiden, if this is you and your nanos again…"  
  
"It's not me. Swear."  
  
"It's not even in theaters anymore, Otacon. It was that bad."  
  
"No!"  
  
"Yes. It sucked. I promise."  
  
"Nuts."  
  
"You know," Raiden piped up, "Lord of the Rings is still out. We could go see that." And it was just a minute short of three hours, too. By the time he got home, Rose would be sleeping like the dead. She had to get up early for work, which meant it would be at least late afternoon tomorrow—if he kept his CODEC off, which he fully intended to do—before she could ask him how the Liquid thing went. By then he'd be able to come up with something convincing.  
  
"Sounds good!" Otacon grinned.  
  
"You've only seen it three times, why the hell not?" Rolling his eyes, and nearly rolling the car on a left turn through a yellow light, Snake set the beast on an eastbound route. Thank God for all-night everything. Ferrying these two around was like being a soccer mom without the halftime orange slices.  
  
Half an hour later, the Snakemobile lurched into the eight-acre spread of pavement around the multiplex. "Everybody out," grumbled Snake unnecessarily. Otacon was already out, windmilling his way up to the ticket window.  
  
The theater was reasonably well-populated, even so late. Raiden had an awkward moment in the lobby—a girl of about seventeen wearing a cloak badly sewn out of a green wool-poly blend backed him and his popcorn into a corner and refused to leave him alone until he'd let her physically examine his ears—but in due course the trio found seats and settled down to watch. Otacon very nearly lost control of his juju-bees during the Episode II trailer.  
  
Later:  
  
"I like this Boromir guy. Evil, but inept."  
  
"Don't get too attached, Snake. He dies."  
  
"Wouldn't have it any other way."  
  
Still later:  
  
"Look, Otacon. A mass of writhing tentacles violating somebody's personal space. Don't you have a tape like this somewhere?"  
  
"Stick it, Snake. It was a rental."  
  
And some time after that:  
  
"Did you see that? With the arrow! That was –cool-!"  
  
"There are nineteen thousand and five arrows in this movie, Raiden."  
  
Eventually the good guys won—kind of—and the movie ended—kind of. Otacon's coffee was wearing thin, and Raiden, who hadn't had any at all, was starting to veer from side to side as he walked. Snake yawned. In another few hours, the sun was going to be coming up. Time to call it a night.  
  
Things were quiet inside the Snakemobile as it wound its way back to Otacon's apartment complex. As many times as it had made the trip, it could practically steer itself. Otacon nudged at Snake's arm a few blocks from home.  
  
"Raiden's asleep," he said.  
  
Snake checked the rear-view mirror. Sure enough. "Cute," he grumbled. "Let's drive to Canada and leave him."  
  
Otacon chuckled groggily. "Let's not. Rose knows your frequency."  
  
"All right, all right."  
  
"You know something, Snake?"  
  
"A few things, yeah. What?"  
  
"Well, they've got the same names as the guys in Titanic, but you and me…"  
  
Snake waited. Otacon was probably going to say something either staggeringly inane or deeply unnerving. When he hadn't slept much, it was very seldom anything else.  
  
"We've got the same names as the guys from 2001. You ever notice that?"  
  
Actually, Snake hadn't. He didn't watch sci-fi. "Creepy," he said.  
  
"Yeah. You're an astronaut, and I'm a computer that tries to kill him."  
  
Snake snickered. Otacon looked briefly miffed, but managed a few chuckles himself as Snake wrestled the car into a compact space and shut things down. It took about a minute and a half to dislodge Raiden from the back seat, where he had gotten tangled in a pair of seatbelts, but in due course he was awake—mostly—and shambling back across the parking lot to his own car. He still had those godawful bowling shoes on. So did Snake, now that he bothered to look. He'd have to infiltrate the alley again and get his boots back, eventually. He liked those boots.  
  
"You want to crash here, Snake?" Otacon yawned. "It's getting early."  
  
"Yeah." There was a hint of greyish pre-dawn already. "If it's okay."  
  
"You know you'd come in the window anyway."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
  
  
  
  
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That's it! Many thanks for your support. It's been fun to write, and unless you reviewers are just toying with me, I'm glad it was good for you too. 


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